Kitchen
by nekobaba
Summary: Ishida Uryuu comes to terms with losing his Quincy powers, and with Kurosaki Ichigo.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Kitchen

Fandom: Bleach

Pairing: Ichigo x Uryuu

Setting: Post-Soul Society Arc

There was a time when I would had been aghast at the mere thought of having any kind of liking for another guy. The me of before would have thought this as an utterly shameful violation and a sin against Quincy dignity.

It became more difficult to be sure of these convictions when Kurosaki Ichigo began to appear in my dreams, wielding Zangetsu, torn and bloody. And beautiful. In those dreams, I could never raise my bow arm to him, useless as it was in real-life, heavy as my own dark and twisting desire. Then I would wake up, aching in some deep place, ashamed and confused.

If you asked me how the dreams all began, I can't quite pinpoint any date or time, except it was after we came back from the strange and intense events in Soul Society.

Real life had felt even more surreal. Chasing hollows and fighting shinigami captains were what we were fated to do, and school was some veneer we were using to hide our paranormal pursuits. In class, when Ichigo's glance drifted over to meet mine, his knowing look spoke of our common thread that only a few others like Orihime and Sado could understand.

To many others like Mizuiro and Keigo, we probably still seemed like before - barely tolerating one another. His brusque attitude and my sarcasm. It came so naturally. It covered perfectly.

Then, that one day, Ichigo had stood at the school gate, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and dangling his satchel easily over his shoulder. He fell in step wordlessly with me as I left the school compound. When we reached my apartment block, I had expected him to carry on walking with his usual "See ya." but he followed me up the stairs.

"What's up with you, Kurosaki? You stalking me now?"

My taunt sounded hollow. It didn't have its usual effect. Not when we were alone like this. I fished out my keys, my fingers trembling just a little. I pushed the door open, removing my shoes while warily scanning his reiatsu with my mind's eye.

Was he here to ask me along on a hollow-hunting excursion? He could have done so on the way home. Maybe he was going to one up me with his own version of see-who-can-zap-more-hollows challenge. Or darn, if he had _somehow_ found out I had been having _those_ dreams about him. Impossible, he didn't even have the ability to sense anyone's spirit force.

He stayed outside, leaning on his elbows on the railing at the verandah, hands clasped to his chin, as if he was planning out chess moves. Except, he was not one to play chess. He rarely hid his motives, and when he showed none, it probably meant he hadn't figured them out yet.

I shuffled on my slippers and stepped back out to join him. For a while, both of us looked down at the daily life of Karakura town lazily mill about below.

"I don't think we are quite the same anymore," he muttered finally. Though as sudden as it was, I immediately realised the truth in his words. He turned and openly looked into my eyes. A little defiant, a little cocky, daring me to disagree. I adjusted my glasses and cast about for something safe to say.

"You mean you only realised? After what all of us went through in Soul Society, these events were so much greater than our ordinary lives here, no one would have stayed unchanged. Orihime and Sado and Rukia ..." I sounded like I was tossing up our comrades' names as decoys. I couldn't, he couldn't ... we couldn't possibly be talking about and wanting the same thing, could we?

"I don't mean ... they've changed, yes, everyone, but you ... I mean, we ..." He scanned the horizon as if hunting for his words that had just run away from him. He pushed both hands through his hair and huffed in frustration.

I sneaked a glance at him, desperately wanting to be sure of what he meant.

He frowned, a pained expression. "Can't stop thinking, you know. How you lost your powers in Soul Society. I know I couldn't stand you in the past, and now, I ... shit."

Can't stop thinking about you, I said in my mind. My face burned. It sounded like my line.

"Oh man... " He faltered and gripped the railing in his hands, like he gripped his zanpakutou, muscles standing out in his forearms. "Look, Ishida, I'm not here out of pity."

He stared down at his shoes for a moment, before he turned to pick up his satchel. Common sense told me to just let him go home and stew in his own embarrassment, but I wondered what it was like to ignore common sense for once.

"Wait," I said, much too loudly. "Come in for some tea, at least." Out of politeness, I justified to myself, but since when were we polite to each other? It was only an invitation of the most contrived kind.

xxx

We sat at my kitchen table, waiting for the water to boil. The domestic setting bought me some time to retreat and think a little. And triggered talk about small things - why I picked up knitting and how he had given up on playing his guitar properly. When I finally set the tea cup in his hands, our fingers inadvertently touching, we ran out of words.

He sipped carefully. Careful not to look into my eyes.

I got up, telling myself to look for the macadamia cookies. Just a guest, I told myself, just a guest.

"I'm sorry." His voice cracked a little. His reiatsu thrummed through the small kitchen, an undirected swirl that did not know where to focus.

"Whatever for," I tried hard to keep my voice even, as I reached to open the kitchen cabinet.

"Stop pretending," he whispered. He had gotten up to stand very close, his reiatsu enveloping me thickly. His fingertips brushed against my right arm. I was surprised that I didn't flinch.

I brought my hand up to get a good look at it. This was the subject of our discussion, wasn't it?

I flexed the fingers. But these weren't the only parts of me that would not feel the same again.

Those things that people called emotions. They crashed over me like a freak tidal wave. Without warning - no tightness around the chest, no stinging of tears forming behind the eyes. I just crumpled to the floor, clinging onto the table top, like I was hanging on to driftwood.

"Oi ... " He sounded just as surprised. Everything was choking up in my throat, I fought hard just to keep breathing.

He put his arms around me. Gingerly. Then surely. As if he figured out what I needed.

That simple gesture made me double over, as if my guts were being wrenched out. His was a solid presence, a force that blew open the floodgates that I had been sealing shut all this time. I tried to pull away in a panic, but he held me fast, whispering "It's ok, it's ok."

I toppled over slowly into him, pulled my glasses off and let the world fade away behind the blur of my myopia and my tears.

xxx

I'm not sure how long we stayed like that. At last we didn't speak but moved instinctively.

He pinned me gently against the cabinet, kneeling between my legs and holding my wrists. I blinked through the sticky film that clung to my lashes, thinking how strange we must have looked, there on the kitchen floor.

I felt his lips on my cheek briefly before tasting them, salty and slightly metallic. Like the background crackling of the spirit power which steadily grew and pulsed through the places where his hands touched my skin, where his tongue licked and probed, where his crotch rubbed against mine.

So this was what they called desire. I was drowning in a sea of it, feeling primal and bare, stripped down to nothing and exposing all that I had secretly craved. Something within me wanted desperately to merge with this motherlode of power that was Kurosaki Ichigo.

"Oh fuck, you're so hard..." Ichigo breathed, pressing a palm into my aching groin.

"Want ..." I whispered, without thinking. And my hands drifted down to unbuckle my belt, and then his. This isn't happening, I thought distantly. His mouth worked hungrily on mine, and I opened myself up to be filled with all his heat and wetness.

I felt his pulse in his erection, strange yet familiar. His long fingers sheathed my cock, spreading and sharing the common heat and friction that meant we were more alike than we thought.

We came almost together, his reiatsu compacted and exploded all at once. He clamped one hand on my shoulder, grunting as he orgasmed. And I trembled and shook through my own, leaning my sweaty brow against his chest. As if we had just run some race against each other, our breaths gasped and mingled, as did our come on the kitchen floor.

xxx

There was a time when I had been aghast at the mere thought of having a sexual relationship with another guy. The me of before would have thought this as an utterly shameful violation and a sin against Quincy dignity.

The me of now, was accepting the fact that after I had lost my Quincy powers, I could never reach perfection nor win fighting on my own. I was letting into my most secret place someone who perhaps was just as alone.

I should have felt ashamed that first time, but it felt like I was finding something I did not even know I had lost. Forgive me, sensei - I am drawing strength from a shinigami and somehow, it feels right.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Kitchen II

Pairing: Ichigo x Uryuu

Genre: PWP, angst

Rating: R (??) ... this rating thing still eludes me

Disclaimer: Nothing in Bleach belongs to me.

Summary: Events in Uryuu's kitchen. Told from Ichigo's point of view.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I watched his delicate fingers cradle the tea cup. These were clever fingers that knew how to draw a spirit bow. I could never make it up to him - whatever he had lost.

What was I doing sitting in Ishida's kitchen? I just wanted to be there, I suppose. I thought I had royally screwed up. Standing outside his apartment, jabbering about god-knows-what. When he asked me in, I never felt more relieved.

He hadn't mentioned a single word about that incident since we came back from Soul Society. Not till Urahara, with his scientist's curiosity, probed about it. Even then, when Ishida described how he was forced to make his fatal choice in his fight against Mayuri, he sounded clinical and detached. Infuriatingly so.

He was that quiet about it, it was scary. Some part of me just wanted to get inside that head to know what he was thinking, how he felt, and how much flak was he enduring from his old man now.

Yet, he went on with everything like nothing happened. He still aced class tests, mended silly frilly things in his handicraft club and hung out with us, trading snide remarks with Tatsuki about me over lunch.

I just couldn't believe how losing your god-given powers didn't matter. It clearly should mean the world to Ishida. What with him always harping on and on about his Quincy pride. If it had been me, I would have died inside.

Perhaps he had.

These nights, on my hollow-cleansing rounds, I would wonder what he was doing with himself. When I channelled my spirit force into my zanpakutou, it weighed slightly more, like a burden, knowing I still had something he didn't.

I had never been into his apartment before. But it felt like Ishida. Even if I were sitting in there alone, I would have felt his presence. He kept his belongings in order. Maybe too much in order.

It soon started getting awkward in the small space with just both of us. There was so much else to say, but I didn't know how. Instead I busied my mouth with drinking the tea. He was pushing a towel around the already spotless table.

"I'm sorry," I managed finally. For what you lost.

He had gotten up and then went very still. Something flickered in his expression, like a crack inching across a glacier block. He mumbled something I couldn't catch and looked at his hand. Damn his Quincy pride for still trying to keep up appearances. I was thinking - if the idiot continued holding himself in, I would just go and shake him till he came to his senses.

Suddenly without a word, he was on his knees.

I'd never seen anyone break down like this before. Maybe myself - once a long time ago. And I remembered the crushing loneliness inside when it happened.

I couldn't do anything, except hold him.

xxx

Uryuu didn't let just anybody see him like this, I was sure. Without his glasses, the tears, the pain - this was his real face. I had pushed him to the limit and this was costing him. And damn, I wasn't going to let it go.

I remembered touching his cool skin, and how his pale face was golden from the late afternoon sun that came in the kitchen window. Some voice inside was saying, this is where you don't turn back. I kissed him on the mouth and realised how badly I had been wanting him, this fallen soldier. I wanted his lean body right there, and to be eventually back to back against mine in battle again.

We didn't fuck on the kitchen floor that day. But it didn't matter, he actually surprised me a little, telling me what he needed. What happened later was we were just mindlessly jerking each other off. Instead of wrong, it felt strangely right.

This wasn't just teenage hormones, like my stupid dad would put it down to. This was what I believed in - if I had it in me to give, I would.

x end x


End file.
